by jphilo | Mar 19, 2012 | Recipes
After a wonky weekend with no voice, my inner muse followed suite and clammed up. This morning I couldn’t think of anything to write about except for the blog readership ruining topics of nose-blowing and phlegm colors. Until the nearly finished, free download of family favorite pie recipes came to mind. Now that’s a post blog readers will flock to, even when the introductory paragraph mentions gross stuff like…
Well, you know.
The free download of the Philo Family’s Favorite Pie Recipes includes the instructions for a few vegetarian main dish pies, for a wide variety of fruit pies, and for Grandma Conrad’s Never Fail Pie Crust. The only pie crust in the world this cook can successfully make. If you don’t count Pillsbury Pie Crust from the box. Because it’s a box. Not a recipe. So it doesn’t count.
But I digress.
To download your free copy of the Philo Family Favorite Pie Recipes – all the pie recipes previously featured on this blog – go to the Free Stuff page. The name took days and days to create, so go ahead. Be impressed. And be prepared to be even more impressed in the next few months when more free downloads are added to the page.
The free stuff page.
Free writers’ stuff. Free faith stuff. Free tissue and phlegm analysis stuff. Hmmm, maybe not the last one. Unless a bunch of you leave comments begging for a page like that. Which probably isn’t gonna happen. Because you’re already downloading the recipes and firing up the oven.
Happy pie baking!
by jphilo | Feb 21, 2012 | Uncategorized
A couple weekends ago, we visited our grown up son and his grown up wife at their grown up house in Wisconsin. They showed us the sights in the area, including a visit to his new workplace.
More than once during the weekend he said, “I have a grown up job,” with wonder in his voice and a shake of his head. “I’m a grown up.”
Allen’s sense of wonder pervaded the entire visit as he and our new daughter showed us around his office, drove us through the grounds of a nearby historical site, showed us the sites in the closest city.
The wonder invaded my soul and Hiram’s too, as we sat in the kitchen and watched this lovely, grown up couple prepare meals for us.
Omelets for breakfast the first morning,
Roast chicken and scrumptious new potatoes ala Julia Child for supper,
crepes for brunch before departure the next day.
I watched them cook and saw
our baby boy on the kitchen floor banging on pots and pans with a wooden spoon,
our preschooler sitting on the counter to peer at what was in the mixing bowl,
our kindergartener standing on a char, “helping” crack eggs (and eggshells) into a bowl,
our 7-year-old learning to make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese all by himself,
our middle schooler baking cookies,
our high schooler sliding frozen pizza into the oven,
our monk baking bread in the monastery kitchen,
our farm hand showing me how to stir fry kale,
our son and new daughter cooking for us three lovely meals.
The wonder hovered round us all that weekend. It was in the car as we drove away. It’s been in my smile and Hiram’s each day since we’ve been home. It wells up inside me and flows down my cheeks as I write. It lulls me to sleep each evening and greets me when the alarm clock rings each morning.
Our son is grown up.
He’s married to a grown up wife.
He lives in a grown up house.
He has a grown up job.
He cooks grown up meals.
In wonder, we bow and give thanks for what God has done.
by jphilo | Dec 17, 2009 | Family
My son called on Sunday and left me feeling all warm and snuggly. He asked me to email all our favorite family recipes so he and Abbey, his fiance, could start their Christmas baking. Don’t ask why the request has me feeling like I just watched a Hallmark movie. I’m not sure I can explain.
But I do know this. For a long time, our relationship with our son was fragile, breakable and delicate as a spider’s web. During the years when he in Washington state and then at the monastery in West Virginia, often the only safe topic of conversation was cooking.
“What’s your recipe for shortbread?” he would ask, and I tried not to cry while I read it to him. Then he wanted the recipe for Early Bird Coffee Cake, Pecan-Caramel Rolls, Gingersnaps, Sugar Cookies and more. When he started asking for them a second time, saying he’d misplaced them in the monastery kitchen, I made a computer file and sent it to him.
When he called and asked for the recipes a few days ago, I found that old file and attached it to an email. I thought of how our relationship began to heal as we talked about baking tricks we’d discovered, variations we’d experimented with, new recipes we’d found. Recipes strengthened my once strained relationship with my son. Maybe they will strengthen the good relationship I already enjoy with my future daughter-in-law. So I added a note to the email. “Let me know what family meals you and Abbey want to learn to cook when you’re here over New Years. I’d love to teach you.”
That’s when my insides went all warm and snuggly. Cooking with my son and his fiance, and perhaps my daughter and her fiance as we celebrate the New Year as a family for the first time. Sounds like a Hallmark movie to me.
